Interview Series V3 - Tim Buesing
In our third installation of the world’s best digital people we visit Sydney, Australia and chat to Tim Buesing, the Digital Creative Director at Publicis Mojo.
Q1. What is the number one thing about your job that gets you out of bed in the morning?
That our creativity drives progress, that today we may come up with something no one has thought of before, something that is funny, new and daring.
Q2. What are your favorite sites/digi campaigns right now?
I enjoy browsing Kickstarter, art projects you can fund and help make reality. They recently introduced curators like the Wooster Collective, so I think they’re going to get a lot more attention. And Richard Simmons doing safety aerobics for Air New Zealand. Their next instructor? My pick would be Mr.T, yelling passengers into submission.
Q3. Who is the new kid on the block - the agency/business to watch for the future?
For me the ‘new kid’ isn’t so much an agency or a business but a great transmedia director - someone who can create stories across multiple formats and time lines - linear and interactive. I am sure there are some prodigies out there who will soon be as famous as Godard, Fassbinder or Coppola.
Q4. What sector would you say is furthest ahead in digital marketing at the moment?
I don’t think the answer lies in any particular sector. Any brand that is out there doing apps is getting ahead. You can learn so much through the experience of an application: what is enjoyable about your brand, how to be concise, playful and interesting enough to be part of people’s lives.
Q5. What technology or initiative is most likely to revolutionize Web/mobile marketing?
Not necessarily a planned initiative but a change towards less phone calls and long emails. Teenagers gave both up eons ago and now we are catching on. All the emotional exchange is pouring into micro shared likes, tweets and +1′s and somehow we need to make more sense of them.
Q6. If you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about digital marketing what would it be?
I would like us to focus on the stories and not on the delivery method. I’d rather debate a project’s ‘interestingness’ than the minutiae of facebook’s API necessary to make it happen.
Q7. What’s the biggest mistake people are making in mobile/Web marketing?
You’ve got to go all in if you want an idea to succeed. You can either produce something as efficiently and ‘off the cuff’ as possible to create a variety of agile and responsive things, or you put heaps of thinking time, effort and budget into one single execution and be serious about how you distribute it. It’s the stuff in between that won’t be seen, shared or liked. It simply won’t matter.
Q8. What is the most useful resource site/blog you use?
It’s a whole range of personalised content, drawn together by Flud or Reedr on the iPad. Nothing terrorises my colleagues quite like my shared articles and videos at 2:30 am. And I love the advice and insights given on ‘The 99 percent‘ by Behance/Scott Belsky.
Umm so who is? and does it matter? Its just an opinion piece focusing on an undeniably experienced and passionate digital marketer
Who is then?
Great work Tim. Agree with the sentiment that brands need to explore more to better understand where they fit within the digital mix and how they can be more useful to consumers.
Awesome stuff.
my comment above no longer makes sense as the critical comment I was referring to has been removed. Just saying.
Good point about the app, many clients would struggle to see what they can offer in a branded context.
Tim, even though this is not a good place to present an agency. But I’d be quite interested about Publicis Mojo after reading your interview. How do they position themselves as part of a broader network agency.
Great stuff Tim.
I think it’s a really great point about things like Kickstarter. Environments like that are the engine room of creativity. Every designer or writer should be thinking entrepreneurially, not just creatively. I’m encrouraged that quality digital creatives are looking wider than the advertising industry for inspiration.
Dave